The sudden shift in the altitude of the plan brought me out of my fitful slumber with a flip of a stomach. Before my brain could even grasp what was really happening, I grasped the armrests for dear life, digging my nails into the cheap fabric.

"We're just descending," Tammy said with a soothing tone.

"That's exactly the problem," I grunted through gritted teeth.

With an empathetic look, she quickly patted my arm and returned her attention to her phone, her screen had what looked to be like an aerial map of the country open on it where she was zooming in to see the city we were arriving in up close. If I had been able to devote any of my attention to anything other than anticipation for the inevitably metallic clank, then hiss of depressurization I was sure could happen at any moment, I would have been a little bit concerned that she didn't exactly know where we were going already.

With a shudder and groan, the plane's landing gear bounced off the runway, sending my brain into hysterics. I took a deep breath in and tried to hold it, trying to remember that at least now if something did go wrong, we wouldn't have hundreds of feet to fall. Entering a meditative state, the panic turned into a numb fear that I didn't snap out of until the pop and creak of the plane door cut through me with pure relief. It didn't matter that I was now in a foreign country at the insistence of someone I had only spoken to once before agreeing, the truly frightening part of the trip was done with.

It took nearly an hour and a half to get through with our passports and wait for our bags to be off loaded so we could pick them up. The entire time, Tammy stared at her phone, swiping through and clicking around on the map.

"Alright,"Tammy said, finally putting her phone in her pocket, "we have a room waiting for us. The hotel isn't too far away, I think we can walk it."

"The university didn't have something already ready for us?" I questioned.

"No." She let out a small laugh and her lips turned up into a half-grin. "I kind of put this together last minute and told them I would take care of things once we got here."

"How last minute?"

"While I was on the phone with you," she chuckled. "I had been considering the trip before, but I needed a student I could trust to go with me. Before you, I pretty much had given up on the idea, most of your peers are pretty straight-laced and not open to the idea of crypto biology."

"As are your peers," I responded.

The airport was clearing out, the handful of people from our flight wandering away in different directions as soon as our luggage arrived. It was a very different experience from what I was used to, at no point did either of us almost get run over by a family desperately sprinting while screaming that they only had two more minutes to make their gate. Here, there were still people roaming around, but the air was much more relaxed and calm, perhaps it was the sticky humidity in the air that made it simply too much effort to get worked up.

Tammy extended the handle on her rolling suitcase,signaling that it was time to go. I hoped that the hotel was indeed not too far away, I was already sweating and my suitcase did not have wheels. I could have spent just a few more dollars to get one that rolled, but I had somehow convinced myself that a university funded trip would definitely include someone to pick us up or the funds to hire a taxi.

I had naively thought that the humidity inside the airport was as bad as it would be outside. As soon as we pushed open the doors leading to the street, hot and oppressively wet air seized my throat making me feel like I was drowning with every breath. I was not the only one to have been sorely mistaken, Tammy stopped in her tracks and began coughing, pulling herself back through the door and slamming it closed.

"What in the hell?!" she exclaimed, looking back at me in disbelief. "I know we're barely above the equator, but this is insane."

"Maybe it's just a particularly bad day?" I suggested, though it was slowly dawning on me that tropical rainforests have rain nearly every day and what that meant for average humidity.

Tammy sucked in a deep breath, like she was going to hold it all the way to the hotel, then opened the door again. The oppressive wall of humidity hit just as hard, even when I knew to expect it, thick and all encompassing, like trying to walk through a hot bowl of pudding. We didn't turn back this time, instead, we pressed forward, our breaths becoming labored as we made the arduous trek all ten feet to the edge of the road.

"New plan," Tammy weezed, "we're going to figure out how to get a cab."

I enthusiastically nodded my approval of the plan, I didn't want to speak, it was hard enough trying to suck in enough of the sludgy air to not feel lightheaded. She pulled out her phone again and began typing frantically, I appreciated her attention to urgency. Looking around, we weren't the only people waiting on the side of the street, though we were the only ones to look quite so distressed about the weather, it seemed like we were the only ones visiting the country for the first time. Much to my delight, a taxi turned into the airport parking lot and was on a path directly to where we were standing.

"A taxi!" I exclaimed and tapped Tammy's shoulder.

She glanced up and threw the phone back into her pocket and extended her hand far away from her body in the universal body posture for hailing a cab. The vehicle turned onto the road running in front of us, slowing, but not enough to stop in front of us, instead, it passed us and stopped several feet away from us for a man and woman.

"Bonjour!" Tammy called out to the couple, taking giant steps towards them. "S'il vou plait… uh… taxi?"

I had no idea how to speak french, but I was certain that her accent and pronunciation was atrocious.

"Bonjour…" the woman said with uncertainty. She pulled her bag closer to her body and looked towards the man accompanying her.

"Avez-vous besoin d'aide pour quelque chose?" he replied.

Tammy's face froze and she looked back at me, like I had ever spoken french in my life. I had taken one course in middle school because it had been required, but all I could remember from it was "bonjour" and that my "french name" had been Nicollete.

"Dames?" he continued, looking at us with concern. He must have realized that we were not a threat and set his bag down next to the taxi.

Tammy seemed to be searching for something to say, her eyes rolling back and forth in her head like she was reading in front of her that wasn't really there. "Oh!" she said excitedly, "Ne parle pas Francais!"

Understanding flooded the couples' faces and they both visibly relaxed.

"Americans?" The woman asked.

"Yes, yes, we are." Tammy seemed to have forgotten temporarily how hard it was to breath and quickly closed the distance between us and the couple. "We need to get to a hotel."

The man nodded and motioned to the taxi. "We can share." His accent was not as thick as his wife's, he had obviously used English extensively before. "We are going to the Hotel L'ebene Vert."

"That wasn't where we were going, but that works." Tammy had already opened the back door of the taxi and was shoving her bags into the back.

"I don't know if this is going to work," I blurted out. I didn't know why I would try to undo the help we had just found, but there I was doing it. "There are four of us and not much space in the back."

"It is okay," the man said with a wave of his hand, "my wife can ride up front and I will tough it out in the back with you two ladies."

Tammy cast me a look that pleaded with me not to try to ruin the aid again and shoved herself into the backseat, climbing over and around her carryon and large suitcase. The man motioned for me to enter next and somehow I managed to squeeze in with my suitcases pressing me mercilessly against the back of the seat so I could give the poor man we had accosted enough room to fit in. The driver stared back at us through the rearview mirror with an unimpressed look, apparently this was not nearly the strangest thing he had ever seen.

Everyone in and bags secured, the man instructed the driver where we were going and we were on our way to the hotel. I was glad that the car had the AC blasting, it made breathing and mere existing much more tolerable.

"Ah, we have been very rude," the woman said, turning around to face us. "I am Claire."

"And I am Jean," the man echoed.

"I'm Tammy and this is my assistant, Elsie."

I was fine with her answering for us, my brain was still slowly catching up with everything that had just happened.

"Assistant?" Clair questioned.

"I am a biologist and she is a student," Tammy explained. "We're here to record and take samples from the rainforest."

"Ah, I don't think we have met a biologist here before," Jean said with a genuine smile. "It sounds like an interesting line of work and there certainly are plenty of areas in the country where few people venture. We are here on a short vacation, a little get away from our jobs in Paris. I run a business and my wife is a pastry chef."

"So you just decided to pop on over half-way across the world for a weekend?" Tammy questioned.

Jean let out a low laugh and nodded his head. "This is all still territory of France, it is no big deal to fly in on a Friday and out again on a Sunday night to be home in time for work in the morning."

"I know it's your vacation, but when we get to a hotel, might I ask you for help for a few moments more?"

Claire looked from Tammy to her husband, a disgruntled look on her face. It seemed like she felt that they had already been inconvenienced enough.

"I suppose," He said, casting a brief, sheepish look to his wife. "What do you need?"

"We need to get to a specific spot and I'm not sure how to get there, if you would just look at where we need to go and maybe point us in the right direction."

"I am not an expert on the country, but I can try," he acquiesced.

His wife scrunched up her nose and quickly turned around with a defeated sigh. I didn't know how we had managed it, but we had been in the country for less than two hours and we had already nearly drowned to death and ruined a poor couple's vacation.